Natalia Lafourcade - Cancionera

Some records are made; Cancionera was caught. For her eleventh studio album, released in 2025, Natalia Lafourcade gathered eighteen musicians into a room, ran the tape, and played the songs live in single takes with no digital editing to smooth the edges. The result is one of the most intimate and handcrafted recordings of her career, a wholly analog document that captures her voice with startling warmth and closeness.

Reuniting with producer Adán Jodorowsky, her collaborator on the landmark De Todas las Flores, Lafourcade roots the album deep in Mexican son and folk tradition and sings much of it through an alter ego she calls La Cancionera, the songstress. Across these songs, from the opening "Apertura Cancionera" and the title track to a haunting reworking of the traditional "La Bruja," she weaves guitar, strings, and hushed arrangements into something that feels both ancient and newly discovered. The Hermanos Gutiérrez collaboration "Luna Creciente" adds a shimmer of desert-blues atmosphere to the record's warm acoustic heart.

More than a follow-up, Cancionera is a deepening of the artistry that has made Lafourcade one of the most quietly essential voices in Latin music, an artist increasingly devoted to preserving and reimagining the folk traditions she came from. It is patient, unhurried, and deeply personal, a record that rewards close and repeated listening.

This double-LP pressing was cut by legendary mastering engineer Bernie Grundman and released via Sony Music. For an album recorded entirely to tape, this is the format it was made for, and a beautiful pressing of a beautiful record.